Out now the Commission report on social protection for people working on non-standard contracts

Out now the Commission report on social protection for people working on non-standard contracts

The European Commission recently published a background report on national social protection schemes for people working on non-standard contract schemes. Despite a number of recent national reforms in particular self-employed people still have lower coverage and benefits than salaried workers, and run a much higher risk of falling into poverty, according to a new Synthesis Report by the European Social Policy Network (ESPN).

The report describes the social and labour market situation of the self-employed and non-standard workers in 35 European countries, analyses their statutory and effective access to the main social protection schemes, and identifies recent national reforms aimed at extending social protection to these categories of workers. It shows that non-standard workers have in general “high” statutory access to social protection schemes whereas the picture is less clear for the self-employed whose access to insurance-based schemes varies considerably among countries. Even when non-standard workers and the self-employed are formally covered by a social protection scheme, they often fail to have effective access to it because eligibility criteria are not tailored to them.

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